In the quaint old village kirk of Calderwood, during the morning service, it passed along the pews from ear to ear among the people, even to the old haunted aisle of St. Margaret, where Cora sat (her sweet, earnest eyes intent on the preacher, though her thoughts were far away) beside her father in his carved oak seat, with all its armorial bearings overhead; for he was lord of all the glen and manor—a little king, but a very kind one, among the peasantry there. So, on this calm, sunny summer morning, when no sound disturbed the preacher’s voice but the rustle of the oak woods without, or the twittering of the martins in their nests among the Gothic carvings, there came vaguely to the pastoral glen—vaguely, wildly, no one knew how—news that a great battle had been fought far, far away in the East, and that we had lost four, five, some said even six thousand men; but that we were, thank God, _victorious_. Pausing in his sermon, while his eyes kindled and his cheek flushed as they had never done when detailing the bloody wars of the Jews and Egyptians, the aged minister announced the tidings from the pulpit, adding (the first false rumour) "that the Duke of Cambridge had fallen at the head of the Guards and our own Highland lads, as he led them, sword in hand, up the braes of the Alma." Every eye turned to St. Margaret’s aisle, where, through the painted windows, the yellow sunshine streamed on Sir Nigel’s silver hair and Cora’s smooth dark braids, for all knew that they had a dear kinsman in that distant field, and when the minister asked the people to join with him in prayer for those who might fall, and for the widows and orphans of the slain, it was with earnest, humble, and contrite hearts that the startled and anxious rustics added their voices to his. Cora covered her face with her handkerchief; and old Pitblado looked round him, grim and sternly as any Covenanter who ever wore a blue bonnet; but the poor man’s heart was full of tears, as he prayed to heaven that his Willie might be safe. Besides, as a native of Fife, he had much of the old and inbred horror of soldiering peculiar to that peninsula, since those dark days when the Fifeshire infantry found their graves on the field of Kilsythe. Ere the red autumn sun went down beyond the green hills of Clackmannan, the electric wire had announced the passage of the Alma over all the length and breadth of the land—flashing over all Europe, from the shores of the Bosphorus to those of the Shannon. But in reply to a message sent by Sir Nigel to the War Office—a telegram despatched to soothe the agony of love—came the brief but terrible answer— "_The name of your nephew is among the killed!_" "Papa—papa—among the killed—among the killed!" Cora exclaimed, after the first stunning paroxysm of her grief was past.